Native Canadian Literature: Writing their own History

Native Canadian literature, though of a recent origin in the written form, has been there in the oral form as a repository of culture, customs, myths, history, epistemology, and ontology for centuries. This new literature is vibrant and thriving mostly because of its authentic and original voice. The book brings out the qualities of this native voioce by analyzing the works of Basil Johnston, Jeanette Armstrong, Lee Maracle and Thomas King who describe the painful and traumatic journey of a native person from childhood to adulthood in search of their history and identity. The book presents the contemporary views of the native communities asking the reader for a new look at their history and identity. The book analyses the fascinating oral tales told by Harry Robinson, perhaps the last speaker of Similkameen language spoken in the Okanagan Valley in North America, complied and edited by Wendy Wickwire in Write it on Your Heart: The epic world of an Okanagan Storyteller, besides the unique contributioin of Georges Sioul in his For An Amerindian Autohistory in adding “Autohistory” to the scholarly discourse where he applies the theory of the sacred circle of life to these works, thus trying to define history of the Canadian natives from the point of view of the natives.